


In Every Place, In Every Time, In Every Corner

by paperwar



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-10
Updated: 2012-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-30 22:18:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/336766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperwar/pseuds/paperwar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taki and her grandfather spent years trying to find youkai. Now that he's gone, Taki isn't about to stop looking.</p>
<p>Written for the Natsume Yuujinchou <a href="http://natsumeyuujinchou.dreamwidth.org/7316.html">comment meme</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Every Place, In Every Time, In Every Corner

"There's a whole secret world out there, Tooru-chan," her grandfather had said to Taki when she was no more than three or four. She'd wandered into his study to find him, yet again, peering intently at an enormous book. His desk was piled with innumerable similar books, scraps of paper, uncapped pens, and odd trinkets (a marble, a pebble, a strange smooth white object that looked like a tree branch to Taki but was only about as long as her hand). 

She'd pouted and tugged at his shirt. She wanted him to show her something magic, something curious from the storehouse. Why was he looking at those books again?

He'd smiled down at her and pulled her into his lap. "They're going to show me what that secret world is like. And how to get there."

"Really?" She squinted at the pages. "Can I come too?"

"Of course. But I need to spend a lot of time studying if I'm ever going to figure it out." Ruffling her hair, he'd added, "I think, though, it's time I took a break. Let's go get a snack and maybe we can play in the storehouse for a little while."

She'd clapped her hands in delight, then, and off they'd gone.

He hadn't let her touch the scrolls there because they were so old and delicate. Even at her young age, she'd been able to see that, but was pleased that he was showing them to her anyway. 

"We can see these?" She'd wrinkled her forehead at the drawings of creatures with huge single eyes or eerily smiling masks or limbs that seemed indistinct or nonexistent.

"Not yet," her grandfather had replied, a frown flickering across his face. "But this is what I'm studying to do. Aren't they wonderful?" 

After that, she'd lie on the floor in the library, curled up next to his desk, entranced by the colorful pictures in whatever book he'd given her to flip through. He'd sit at his desk, turning pages, mumbling to himself while taking notes. Occasionally he would read aloud; she became accustomed to the rhythm of his words, the pattern of speech that seemed to accompany mystical things. Sometimes it was lulling, but more often it grabbed her even though she didn't understand.

Other times she'd follow him around the storehouse. He'd mutter cheerfully as he rummaged through one box after another. After a quick scan of the contents -- once in a while he'd pull out something and tuck it away where she couldn't get it -- he let her tug out whatever looked fun from the open containers, chuckling at the chaos the two of them were creating. She never minded helping him clean up. He never yelled.

After his death, she couldn't bear to venture into the storehouse. Not until one day her parents were discussing what could be safely destroyed. She flung herself out of her room and down the hallway. 

“Those things are mine! Grandfather left them for me! I'm going to take care of it all, so don't touch it!” Hands on hips, she glared up at them.

Her mother had shrugged. “We don't need the space, Tooru-chan. It just seems silly to keep things that no one wants. But if you want to take care of all that weird stuff, then go ahead.” She shivered.

Pushing the door to the storehouse open, she dashed down each floor, whipping her head from side to side to give a quick check as to the rightness of what she saw there. Her footsteps seemed like the loudest sound for kilometers. Everything was still, and there was the box he'd been going through the day before he died -- yes, she recognized the twisted, feathered objects she'd found underneath the old clay pot that had been the focus of his interest.

She blinked twice, hard, before running out and slamming the door.

A few weeks later she woke up abruptly one Saturday morning and marched into the storehouse. She'd been dreaming of her grandfather. 

She went right to the shelf where he'd kept the scrolls. She hadn't been sure she could bear to do it, but she'd taken them down and, one by one, unrolled them, weighting down the corners with books or random artifacts on nearby shelves. They crackled; one of them tore across a corner. She winced. He would be appalled. Stretching out on the floor and pressing her face close to the paper, she strained to make out every detail of the creatures sketched on them. "Kappa," she whispered. "Kitsune." She repeated names over and over. 

Back in her room, she took out the piece of paper she'd found, with her name on it in her grandfather's writing, the day after he'd died. It had taken her weeks before she could even bring herself to read it, much less consider what to do about it.

"Use this," the note said. The first time she'd read it, the shakiness of the handwriting made her cry. The other piece of paper in the envelope had a strange circle traced on it. 

"I'm leaving this to you," the note continued. "Maybe you'll get to that world without me. I believe you can."

Finding a stick sturdy enough to drag through the patchy grass and mud in the behind the house was a challenge, but she found an abandoned broom and pried off the brush. She practiced the design until she could do it without looking.

She had no idea what the circle was supposed to do until a week later. Her first youkai didn't look like any of the ones on the scrolls. It was small, with a vague humanoid shape and a prominent snout on its face. She'd run back to her room and wept, that she couldn't share that with her grandfather, that she couldn't be sure that he'd ever seen such a sight himself. It didn't stop her from going back the next day and drawing more circles. 

The next day rain sheeted down, so she spent the afternoon in her grandfather's library instead. There were the books he was reading the night he died. She climbed up into the chair and pressed her face into the pages. Breathing in, she only smelled the musty smell of old paper, but she felt that she must be inhaling his scent, him, somehow. It gave her a sense of companionship.

After that, she hurried home from school every day to struggle through a few more pages. Her mother made a comment once about how Taki should spend the same effort on her schoolwork, but it was easy to ignore her. 

Taki wanted to _know_. Even more than she did when her grandfather was alive, she wanted to know what he was working on, what he wanted, what he found. 

She abandoned circles, opting to spend more time squinting at the crabbed handwriting and archaic vocabulary of the books instead. They'd be there, the youkai, when she had time to go back.

Her mother objected. "Don't you think she should be spending more time with friends?" she'd asked Taki's father. "It's making her a little strange."

Taki, huddled in the hallway outside the kitchen, scowled. She didn't want to play with the other children in her class; she supposed they were nice enough, but they were a little dull. The books, the youkai: now those were interesting. 

Taki froze when her father began to speak. "Well, maybe. But she's just like your father. There's nothing wrong with that. Don't push her." She let out a slow, quiet breath and began tiptoeing back down the hallway. That was right; she was like her grandfather. She wanted to be.

**

She was beginning to see that some of the things he left behind belonged together. Certain objects seemed to call to each other with a very quiet hum that she'd only just learned to hear. Some of them were already stored that way, her grandfather presumably having picked up on the same things. She thought that was how he had worked, part analysis of the books he was reading, part navigation by the heart and the soul. That had to mean it was all right.

When the weather warmed up she returned to drawing circles. There was a field behind their house that was flat and the earth wasn't too hard-packed, nor was there an excessive amount of grass or stones. She spent most of her time out there, now, sometimes putting her head down on the grass and drowsing in the sun. 

Winter came around again and she spent those hours in the library. Sometimes what she read circled back on itself, twisty trails of speculation and myth and uncertainty. Authors contradicted themselves from book to book, and even within the same one. And they all seemed to argue with each other.

Some youkai sounded scary. They often liked to play tricks on humans; a lot of them seemed to hate humans. Sometimes she wondered why her grandfather had wanted to see them so much. But then she'd turn a page and see an illustration of some fantastic bizarre creature, and she couldn't help it: she wanted to see them, too.

The books spoke of binding, of the exertion of strength. Of how to protect oneself against youkai.

These paragraphs were even more frightening, so she skipped them, though later she'd turn back with a sense of duty. She needed to know these things, after all. 

She wanted to understand more than ever.

**

The youkai she'd seen in her circles mostly seemed to not notice her. She thought they must be used to walking among humans, unseen, so it was only very occasionally, when she couldn't suppress a sharp indrawn breath of wonder, that they noticed her staring at them. Their eyes would meet; the youkai would usually then rush off in shock.

Despite the stories of hostile youkai, she'd never yet felt worried about any of her encounters.

The years went on, and she kept reading, kept learning. There were still whole chapters she couldn't fathom, spells of protection against things she couldn't comprehend, incredibly theoretical discussions that went over her head.

She'd shrug, especially after she reread a chapter she remembered reading years ago that was more comprehensible this time around. In the future she knew she'd go back to pages that baffled her now and things would be clear.

The broom handle had snapped long ago, but now that she was bigger, it was easier to find sticks of appropriate size. The first few circles she drew in the spring every year were shaky; her mind remembered the pattern, hazily, but it took a while for the muscle memory to return after a long break over winter. 

One year she thought she might have to dig out that piece of paper and retrace it, but she knew she got it right when a kappa bumbled his way across the edge of the circle. She clamped her mouth shut on the gasp that would've given her away.

"Grandfather," she whispered after the youkai had passed. If he'd ever seen this, the very first thing he would've done afterwards, she knew, would be to tell her. Her eyes stung. Standing up, she went back to the house.

"Tooru," her mother said as she came in. "Are you all right?" She frowned slightly.

Taki forced a smile, then found, to her surprise, that she didn't have to force it. "Yes. I'm fine. The world is an interesting place." She hurried off to her room, feeling the puzzled look on her mother's face boring through her back. She didn't care. That other world her grandfather dreamed of grew closer and closer every day. There was so much to do: spells to research, youkai to learn about. He might not be able to see that world anymore, but she could, and did, and would.


End file.
